


Colouring outside the lines

by sirona



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Easter, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-02
Updated: 2011-05-02
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:37:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirona/pseuds/sirona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It <i>is</i> tradition, true enough, and he’s been looking forward to inducting Steve in the Williams’ Easter Saturday club -- though god only knows what unholy mess Grace’s made, if she’s been impatient enough to start on her own without waking him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colouring outside the lines

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the h50_flashfic challenge, theme: Traditions.

Danny surfaces slowly, languidly, feeling warm and deliciously comfortable. He’s alone in the bed, taking up far more than his side of it in a strange diagonal full-length sprawl, like he’s been staking a claim even in his sleep. His face is mashed into Steve’s pillow, every breath bringing with it the scent of sunshine and surf mingling with traces of Steve’s shampoo -- and yeah, okay, he’s well aware that he’s grinning stupidly into the pillowcase; but that’s just the effect Steve has on him, even in absentia.

For all the decadent contentment of soft sheets and balmy breeze on yet another gorgeous Saturday morning, there’s a niggling thought at the back of his mind, insistently poking at his hind brain. He’s forgetting something, he knows he is, but for the life of him he can’t figure out what. He runs a few mental checkpoints -- he picked up Grace last night, but it’s not a full Grace weekend, though why exactly that is eludes him frustratingly. It’s still early even for his monkey, who takes after her mom in that she’s an early bird if Danny ever saw one. Danny almost dozes off again -- it’s been a long, harrowing week, and his thoughts slow down like molasses, chasing their tails lazily around and around in his muzzy head. The mingled scents of him and Steve make him feel happy, drowsy, safe--

A resounding crash that manages to sound sheepish even from all the way downstairs startles him wide awake, and Danny sits bolt upright as it all comes back to him in a dizzying flow of remembered planning. It’s Easter weekend, and he has a sudden premonition of the pandemonium he’s about to discover when he makes his way to the kitchen. It _is_ tradition, true enough, and he’s been looking forward to inducting Steve in the Williams’ Easter Saturday club -- though god only knows what unholy mess Grace’s made, if she’s been impatient enough to start on her own without waking him.

He locates a T-shirt and a pair of sweats, tugs them on quickly one leg at a time as he rushes for the stairs, narrowly avoiding braining himself on the bedroom door frame. He hears the voices when he’s about half-way down, and his trepidation increases ten-fold when he hears Steve’s rumble alongside Grace’s chipper instructions. It’s a minor miracle the house is still standing, if they’re doing what he thinks they’re doing.

He stops dead in the kitchen entrance, curling his bare toes into the floorboards and crossing his arms over his chest to avoid giggling himself silly at the sight. Steve has red food dye streaked over his cheekbone and across one eyebrow, and a look on his face that Danny last saw him sport when he diffused a pipe bomb bare-handed on Wednesday. Grace’s focused little frown looks eerily similar to Steve’s as she peers down onto the table contents from the vantage point of the small stool, which Steve unearthed for her yesterday from the mess in the attic. Her hair is pulled back in two slightly lopsided pigtails; Danny can’t help but smile goofily at what’s unmistakably Steve’s painstaking, if unpracticed, handiwork. As Danny looks on, she pokes the spoon she’s holding inside a metal tin and sloshes the contents around.

The table is covered in eggs in various stages of development. A tidy basket lined with straw sits at the far corner, half-full of shiny, perfectly-turned-out eggs, each one painted with a different pattern. There’s polka dots, zig-zags, ribbons; Danny’s baffled at both the variety and the precision -- his and Grace’s eggs usually look like a rainbow exploded all over them. What these ones do have in common are the various shades of pink that hurt Danny’s eyes a little, but speak clearly as to who the mastermind behind the project really is.

“This one’s ready, too,” Grace says seriously, watching Steve’s every move like a hawk as Steve, eyes narrowed in concentration, lifts the coloured egg carefully out of the food dye solution and relocates it to the paper towels, spread over a newspaper bearing clear signs of previous wet egg encounters.

“Go ahead and put the next one in,” Steve says as he reaches for another white egg from a bowl-full at his side and hands it over to her. “Shall we try making the piggy this time?”

“Yeah!” Grace nods excitedly, placing it on her spoon and lowering it carefully into the tin. Steve looks straight at Danny, as if he’s known Danny’s been standing there the whole time; the wide grin on his lips makes the laughlines around his eyes crinkle enticingly. Danny wants to kiss each and every one of them, bury a hand in Steve’s thick hair and hold on.

“Good morning,” Steve says fondly, looking so happy standing there, elbow-deep in food dye and eggshell next to Danny’s perfect daughter, that Danny’s heart stutters a little in his chest.

“Daddy!” Grace shrieks, jumps off the stool and runs over to give him a hug, leaving behind a perfect pink handprint pressed into his white T-shirt.

“Hi, monkey,” Danny says, kissing the top of her head and smiling at Steve over it. “Morning, you,” he adds warmly, letting Steve see everything he’s long given up on trying to hide, all right there in his eyes. Steve’s grin mellows until it turns into that smile, the one that drives Danny to distraction every time he sees it, the one Steve keeps safely hidden inside, lets out for Danny’s eyes only.

Grace slips her small hand in Danny’s and drags him over to the table.

“Look, Danno, [we’re going to make animals](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_zo34wABp5lg/S7dEU7KlyXI/AAAAAAAABik/H6-Nk7kNk0o/s1600/unique-egg-decorating-ideas-zooeggology-03-ss.jpg)! There’s a froggie, and a doggie, and a duckie, too! We’re only making the pink eggs right now, can you set up the other colours while me and Steve finish the piggy? Steve said to wait for you before we started the rest of them. He helped me paint on the dots and stripes, see? It was his idea!” She beams a sunny smile Steve’s way, and Steve damn near _glows_ with the praise.

“They’re beautiful, Grace, really gorgeous. Who knew Steve was so good at pink?” Danny says, throwing Steve a sly glance over Grace’s head. Steve manages to flip him off while Grace concentrates on cutting a somewhat irregular circle out of a piece of pink cardboard, tongue sticking out in concentration as she wields the safety scissors. Steve’s fighting a grin as he does, though, so Danny huffs a laugh and gets to work. He wouldn’t put it past Steve to have researched egg colouring techniques when he found out they’d have Grace this Saturday, the big goof. When he sees Steve break out the q-tips, he knows he’s got the truth of it.

Danny thinks he can get used to this, even if his T-shirt is a lost cause to Steve and Grace’s enthusiasm. It’s a sacrifice he’s willing to make for the way Steve’s eyes linger over Grace and him, the way Steve finds all manners of flimsy excuses to touch him, the way Steve’s shoulder presses to Danny’s, warm, steady, immutable as he steadies his daughter’s hands with careful fingers.

\-----


End file.
